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Dear Reader,
Since 2023, Goa has experienced a dramatic surge in conversions in land use from agricultural, forest, and protected areas to urban development. This accounts for almost a fifth of all conversions in the previous 37 years, in just eighteen months. This escalation followed a discreet amendment to the Goa Town and Country Planning Act, which facilitated changes in land-use without public consultation.
The amendment has faced criticism for facilitating arbitrary land conversions that overlook ecological considerations, severely eroding Goa's natural aesthetics, vital for its tourism industry, and a major source of income for its residents. As Article 14 reports, the public outcry has led to widespread protests across the state. Last October, about a thousand of its citizens assembled at the Town and Country Planning Department in Panjim, the state’s capital, to demand the resignation of the Chief Town Planner and the reversal of recent amendments.
The environment in India is, at the best of times, fragile. When compounded by blatant government collusion in its degradation, it usually results in calamity, as the residents of Goa, and recently, Uttarakhand’s Bageshwar district, discovered.
Last November, the Uttarakhand High Court acted suo motu on media reports about rampant illegal soapstone mining in Bageshwar district. The reports also highlighted consequent land subsidence, raising fears of a potential replay of the Joshimath crisis in January 2023. The court commissioned a fact-finding report to investigate the alleged transgressions. The report, accessed by The Reporter’s Collective, found that state machinery was blatantly “complicit” in giving mining permits indiscriminately to favoured miners, allowing severe over-exploitation and turning a blind eye to land encroachments. Alarmingly, the report also stated that the officials tried to thwart the Court’s inquiry by offering bribes to tailor its narrative and actively seeking to help illegal miners. Decrying the “complete lawlessness” in the awarding of mining contracts in the state, the High Court last week banned the extraction of soapstone in the district.
The Kallayi River in Kerala’s Kozhikode, with its erstwhile glory as a leading waterway for timber trade, still remains a vital resource for transportation, fishing and tourism. The River has its source in the springs in Ariora Hill in the district. However, in the recent past, as Keraleeyam Masika found, ill-conceived and rampant construction on the Hill threatens water availability and biodiversity in the region with locals questioning the unbridled construction in an extremely fragile ecosystem.
‘Revenue villages’—settlements that fall under the revenue department—usually allow greater access to development funds, agriculture loans, health services and public works, compared to ‘forest villages’. Therefore, their conversion into revenue villages is much looked forward to. However, in Madhya Pradesh, 517 of its 925 forest villages, Ground Report points out, are yet to be converted due to a combination of government incapacity, indifference and legal challenges. This hampers the forest villages—largely composed of tribal communities—from accessing government services that are rightfully theirs.
For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.
Warmly,
Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF
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